Reminder
by A-Karana
Summary: Sometimes in life we get reminded of what is important and what isn't.


This is really short, not betaed and maybe even a bit confusing, BUT I needed to write this tonight, because that's the kind of day I had. Sometimes we get upset over such stupid things, and we know it and the something happens and we understand just how stupid we were before. And I needed to write it to remind myself of that. I will go over it tomorrow to edit out the mistakes. Sorry for now!

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Reminder

He couldn't believe that he had missed it. He hadn't paid enough attention and she had nearly died. There hadn't been a gun fight this time. No man to man fight either. No ambush. No knife attack, no bomb. He hadn't failed on his job, he hadn't let down his colleague, but still he felt like he had let down his partner.

Just as any other day everything else had been more important. He had listened to music on his ipod when he had come in and had let it play. He wondered if he wouldn't have, if he had heard her little sounds of pain. She must have been hurting, he knew.

Would he have seen the anguish on her face if he had paid more attention to her than his computer screen? He had read several newspaper articles, had checked out new youtube videos that amused him, but not her.

Would she have told him if he had talked to her instead of talking to a call center agent because of his cell phone, which he had just bought and which was already broken and not working anymore?

Could he have prevented it if he had spent the evening with her, watching her read a book instead of playing with his fancy remote to his fancier TV watching a movie he had probably already seen a hundred times?

Everything had been so much more important for him until she had collapsed against his desk, seeking his help while he had been busy sending out stupid twitter messages. Only then had he noticed her pale face, the dark rings under her eyes, the cold sweat on her forehead and the pain written all over her features.

Now he sat and watched her, simply her. She had been allowed to go home if someone looked after her- that someone was him.

He checked for signs of her getting worse, the fever mounting, if she threw up… She wasn't sleeping and they both kept staring at her arm, wrapped in a cast from her shoulder to her finger tips, with ice packs resting on her bandaged wrist. He wished the nurses at the emergency room had left a window in the cast so they could check if the red line was diminishing. Or not.

Not knowing drove him crazy. He needed her to be okay. She couldn't die like this! His ninja didn't die because she had cut herself on a old, dusty book and developed a Lymphangitis that was now bordering on blood poisoning. Not because she had been too stubborn to get a paper cut checked out. Not because he had been too distracted by everything else to notice that the cut had become infected. Not because they both had been too busy to see the red line that by now ran up until her shoulder.

"You do not need to watch me all the time, Tony. Watch some TV," she tells him and looks at him.

"No, thanks," he shakes his head and wants to say more. She stops him with a surprised smile on his face.

"This is a first, you not wanting to watch a movie. I have DVDs, you know," she teases him lightly, but he doesn't enter this banter. He just shakes his head and stares at her cast.

"I'm sorry, Ziva," he says finally after a long while of strange silence.

"For not stopping the nurse from wrapping my arm in this?" she asks and lifts her arm up a bit. The cast is heavy though and she's still weak from the fever. She should rest.

"No," he says and gently places a hand on her arm and re-adjusts the ice pack. "For not noticing that you are hurt," he tells her.

"I am not hurt, Tony," she protests.

"You got an infusion with a antibiotics, you were forced to take painkillers and will have this lovely cast for at least two weeks. You are hurt," he points out.

"It is just a paper cut," she remains stubborn.

"A paper cut that has you lying In bed with a fever and collapsing against my desk," he emphasizes and pauses. "I'm really sorry Ziva," he says again.

"For what?" she repeats her earlier question, only this time she is serious.

"This morning my biggest worry was that my damn cell phone had stopped working, that I could complain on twitter about it, get the new Magnum DVD box on time for my marathon this weekend and read emails from people I haven't spoken to in years. I was so focused on all of that that I didn't pay attention to what was really important." He swallows the "You" in the end, not wanting to freak her out.

"I did the exact same thing, Tony. I didn't notice either how bad the infection had got," she says and touches his hand with the fingertips of her injured hand.

"Don't move," he tells her softly and instead takes her free hand in his. Silence spreads again and he is starring at the white cast once more.

"You don't have x-ray vision, Tony. You can really watch a movie if you want," she breaks the silence.

"I don't feel like it," he tells her. She looks questioningly in his eyes and sees that he is telling the truth. "I'm not interested in movies, the internet or my cell phone right now. I'm just interested in you getting better." He shrugs, helpless how to explain it differently.

"Sometimes something happens that puts everything else in perspective," she knows and by the shadow that flies over her face he knows she is thinking about painful memories.

"I don't want you to die and especially not because of a paper cut," he voices and feels her squeezing his hand.

"There have been moments in my life when I was ready to die, even wished for death to come and take me," she admits. "But not now. I refuse to die because of a paper cut," she says with conviction.

"Don't worry, I won't let you. After all I need my ninja to protect me from the bad boys out there," he says and smiles a bit.

"Your ninja, huh?" she grins back and pulls him closer by his hand. "Why don't you keep a very close eye on me?"

"You'll never learn," he chuckles when she once more messes up the idioms. Carefully he wraps his arm around her shoulder and pulls her more into him, her bandaged arm lying between them on the bed.

"You need to help me get out of my clothes and into my pajamas with this monster," she mumbles and nuzzles her nose against his cheek.

"Not a problem, Ziva. I'm good at undressing women," he grins cockily.

"I take it, you're offering to be my personal nurse for the next two weeks," she only half jokes.

"Not a part of you I haven't seen yet," he says and they both know it's true. Undercover assignments and missions in countries with only one hotel room available have their… advantages.

"Mmh," she makes and when she closes her eyes he can feel her lashes tickle his skin.

They just lay there on her bed, in the semi dark, with her thick white cast in between their bodies. The apartment is silent, everything turned off, No music, no TV, no internet or cell phones. They can hear each other breathe and after the shock he got today he makes a point out of remembering that this sound matters more to him than everything else.


End file.
